The giant Muslim lie, Al Dura, which set off the second intifada, has been debunked repeatedly. The persistent nature of the Jewish blood libel was advanced not by Islamic supremacists (notorious for their vile Jew-hatred), but by Jew-haters in the media, specifically France 2. Photo right: Postage stamp depicting the Al-dura blood libel.

It has been [twelve] years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery.

The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the second intifada. The boy Mohammed was the iconic martyr, his name and face gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against America, and in the ghastly video of the beheading of American Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl.

Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. The official IDF investigation concluded that, based on the position of IDF forces vis-à-vis the Duras, it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that an Israeli bullet hit the boy. Research by the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic and Commentary magazine concurred. Then a German documentary revealed inconsistencies and probable manipulations in the account of France 2's lone journalist on the scene that day, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh.

And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2's Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

France 24 lost in court. The persecution of the tiny Jewish state mirrored France's persecution of Alfred Dreyfus. And now the father, Jamal al-Dura, has been declared a barefaced liar in a French court of law.

Doctor accused of slandering Palestinian who claimed he was injured by IDF acquitted by French Supreme Court Aviel Magnezi, INN

The French Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted an Israeli doctor accused of slandering a Palestinian man who claimed he was injured by the IDF during the second intifada.

The Palestinian man, Jamal al-Dura, and his 12-year-old son Muhammad, became the symbol of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, when the two were caught in a fire exchange in the Netzarim Junction. The boy was killed in the incident, triggering a blame game: The Palestinians accused Israel for Muhammad's death, while Israeli officials claimed he was hit by Palestinian fire.

The father, who survived the ordeal, relayed his version before the media, showing the scars that he incurred in the incident. The claim prompted Dr. Yehuda David of Tel Hashomer Hospital to reveal that the scars were actually a result of a surgery the father had performed years earlier, after al-Dura was attacked by Hamas operatives who suspected him of collaborating with Israel.

The lying Jamal al-Dura and son during incident (Photo: AFP)

Al-Dura decided to sue David, and last year a Paris court ruled against the doctor due to the fact he released information from al-Dura's medical records. He was ordered to compensate al-Dura with €13,000, but decided to appeal the ruling at the French Supreme Court.

"It couldn't have turned out better," David told Ynet after the ruling was overturned. "It means that I spoke the truth, and the father just lied. "We managed to deconstruct their false statements. All the scientific evidence that we collected for the past 12 years proves that the incident was staged and fake. They made up the father's injury, and the IDF troops never shot the boy." David has recently begun raising funds to fight what he calls the "Palestinian's false anti-Israel propaganda," and said that Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon has joined the effort.

"I recently opened a Facebook page in order to collect funding for the fight against the Palestinians' mendacious propaganda," David said. "I got a phone call from Ya'alon, and on Sunday he will put a proposal on the justice minister's desk to allocate funds, and then we will take this venture on the road… This will put an end to the lies."

This is a classic case, textbook, of what is wrong with American Jewish lay leadership. They do us more harm than good.

Dear friends,

During these past 6 years, since I began fighting the Al Dura hoax, in 2002--a 21st Century blood libel, based on a phony news report, broadcast on French television, on September 30, 2000--all of my efforts have been dedicated toward revealing the truth. I have enjoyed the support of numerous individuals and organizations that have motivated me to dedicate my life to exonerating the State of Israel and the Jewish people from the undeserved accusation that Israeli soldiers deliberately murder children. Unfortunately, however, there is one organization, the American Jewish Committee, that should have been a natural ally. Instead, it functioned as an obstacle to all my efforts.

In my previous letter, I had harsh words for the American Jewish Committee. In response, the organization is now attempting to refute my truthful claim that it obstructed and damaged efforts to expose the Al Dura hoax to the light of day. I am struck by the speed with which AJCommittee has risen to its own defense. But, in the past 7 years, since the incident occurred, the AJCommittee never once made haste to challenge the Al Dura hoax. Despite the unprecedented access that the AJCommittee enjoys among Europe's heads of state, it dispatched no American representatives to Paris, sent no letters to Sarkozy, did not request discussions with Sarkozy about the hoax, and published no articles refuting the French media slander of Jews, and the State of Israel. But, in its own narrow interests, it has recently sent out a letter claiming to have been consistently involved in fighting on the side of the truth. AJCommittee issued three press releases seven years after the libel was broadcast, though it took less than seven days for the organization to publish a letter exonerating itself from my accusations. Nevertheless, I am grateful for those three English language press releases. However, it is hard to reckon with the organization’s steadfast refusal, since May 21, 2008, to issue a single comment on our astounding victory--in the French language, for a French audience, in France! When its Paris representative, Valerie Hoffenberg, was asked to issue a public statement about the case, in French, she refused. What are the people who risked everything in pursuit of the truth to glean from her silence?

Now, AJCommittee is attempting to destroy my credibility in order to protect its own. But, I ask you, why would the AJCommittee characterize me as a liar if it were truly dedicated to unmasking the egregious lie of Al Dura?

I have rebuked the AJ Committee because, even though the truth has enjoyed a recent landmark victory in court, with the ruling that was issued on May 21, 2008, the battle still continues. The victory, though hard-earned, remains fragile. The French government continues to remain silent. But, Sarkozy, as de facto CEO of France 2, has a duty to intervene and call for an internal investigation--especially now that the judge ruled that my criticisms of the Al Dura report are reasonable and that I am well within my rights to assert them as a journalist and media analyst. The AJ Committee should be advocating on the side of the truth. Instead, it intervenes against me in the political sphere while it refuses to make even a modest request of Sarkozy--with whom it enjoys a warm relationship--to look into my accusations against France 2.

Sadly, Jason Isaacson's letter refuting my criticisms indicates that AJCommittee has chosen to circle the wagons rather than own up to its mistakes. Evidently, its most cherished ideal is self-preservation. Exonerating the State of Israel and world Jewry from the blood libel of Al Dura does not yet appear to be a priority.

I was and still remain a lonely voice struggling against the entire French establishment. Le Nouvel Observateur, an important French journal, just published a damaging article and petition concerning the court ruling which has already been signed by some eighty important French writers and intellectuals. The article ridicules the accusation of fraud and the notion that the incident was a staged scene. It portrays France 2 and Charles Enderlin as defenseless victims of a stubborn campaign of hatred perpetrated by me!

AJCommittee could perform a valuable service for the truth by publishing supportive articles in French to let the media and government know that it is now on my side. So far, it has done no such thing. In France, the media are tightly controlled by the government but the government is very concerned about what American Jews think. Where is AJCommittee’s French voice? The French media continue to ignore our victory. Therefore, it is no surprise that the charge that Israeli soldiers deliberately murder children, just as the Nazis murdered Jewish children, is widely believed in France (as well as in Europe as a whole). AJCommittee's continuing inaction--and what is worse, its obstruction--in the face of this 21st Century blood libel, endangers French and world Jewry.

The AJ Committee has no credibility among French Jews. It is common knowledge that Valérie Hoffenberg uses her influence with the government to thwart my efforts. Because of Hoffenberg's close connections to Sarkozy, she is actually feared by Jewish leaders. In France, access is everything. Never is the old cliche that "It is not what you know, but whom you know" more apt than in France! In France, people do not risk offending the State. For those who do, retribution is swift and unforgiving. Those with something to lose take no chances. That is the reality of France.

It is understandable, therefore, that on June 5, 2008, Richard Prasquier, President of the CRIF, the French Jewish umbrella organization that interfaces with the government on matters of concern to its constituents, wrote a letter to David Harris, executive director of the AJCommittee, apologizing for my supposed untoward criticism of the organization. Prasquier states that he is sure that Harris “wants the truth revealed as much as we do.” I commend Prasquier for his vote of confidence in David Harris, but I notice that Prasquier is silent with regard to Hoffenberg. Consequently, I respectfully suggest that David Harris read Prasquier’s letter between the lines and take my concerns to heart—particularly those pertaining to Hoffenberg--in order to insure that his organization measures up to Prasquier’s vote of confidence! I further suggest that David Harris investigate the malfeasance of his representative in France in order to facilitate the airing of the truth that Prasquier so dearly cherishes. Please read the article Richard Prasquier wrote about the Al Dura case in French.

David Harris was awarded the Legion of Honor by President Jacques Chirac—France’s most anti-Israel president of recent decades. The al Dura hoax exploded during Chirac’s tenure and unleashed a continuing stream of uninhibited anti-Semitic and anti-Israel invective in the media. Moreover, it inaugurated a new wave of anti-Semitic violence, unprecedented since the Nazi era, that eventually terrorized non-Jewish France as well, culminating in the riots of October 2005. My defeat in the lower court was probably due largely to the intervention of Jacques Chirac. Now David Harris can wear his Legion of Honor pin with pride. Now, he no longer needs to operate under the cloud of Chirac.

Although Hoffenberg's role in France is destructive to the interests of French Jews, I can understand why David Harris might consider her to be a valuable asset. She thrills and flatters his donors with good photo opportunities with French dignitaries.

Valérie Hoffenberg claimed that she had seen the raw footage that France 2 was withholding from the public prior to its release in court on November 14, 2007. She insisted that the raw footage contained nothing to support the charge that the Al Dura incident was a staged hoax. Hoffenberg also claimed that French Jewish leaders had already seen the raw footage and agreed that it contained nothing helpful to my defense. With these contentions, she attempted to persuade Jewish leaders not to support me in the defamation case France 2 and Charles Enderlin had brought against me.

But, Hoffenberg’s claims are false. In fact, the raw footage clearly demonstrates that the “dead” child was very much alive after he was pronounced “dead” by Charles Enderlin. Please, watch this 10 second clip from the raw footage if you want to see how the “dead” boy raises his head, elbow and leg, looks directly at the camera, then puts his head down, but leaves his leg suspended in the air. It is an amazing performance, for a corpse. But, no one attributed it to the paranormal.

Detecting the Al Dura hoax is not rocket science. However, it took a presentation from me to convince Elysée officials that France 2’s report was a fraud. With Hoffenberg working on the inside, she could have educated her friends about the case, given them access to the evidence, and, at the very least, let them know that I and others had raised legitimate questions about France 2’s version of the incident. The evidence is simple and direct. But, Hoffenberg, for three and a half years, had blocked her colleagues’ access to the evidence and promoted her belief that the hoax was actually an authentic news report.

Jason Isaacson, in his letter, implies that AJCommittee secured my two meetings at the Elysee Palace that occurred between February 27, 2008 and May 21, 2008. In fact, my entry was firmly blocked. Only dogged persistence on my part secured those meetings after many fruitless entreaties. The meetings, however, were successful, and I easily convinced the officials with whom I met that France 2 and Charles Enderlin had perpetrated a hoax.

Lynda Asmani is a French politician of Arab Muslim descent. She is a friend of Israel and a friend of the Jews and supports me in the case against France 2. She currently works in the Ministry of Finance.

Last fall, she visited the Elysee Palace. She specifically asked about the government's position on the Al Dura case. She said that I am fighting for the truth; that everyone knows the Al Dura incident is a hoax; therefore, why is the government not speaking out?

The government's position is extremely significant. As President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy has the power, ability, and legal authority to call for a forensic analysis of the footage of the incident. He can order the release to the general public of the entire 27 minutes of raw footage France 2 claims to have filmed of the incident—and not merely the 18 minutes it released to the court in defiance of the court order of September 19, 2007. Moreover, he can issue an apology from the government-controlled television station for broadcasting a staged “killing” and, therefore, an apology for being the party to a colossal hoax in violation of French law (it is a crime to publish false information on French airwaves). He can also acknowledge that France 2 needlessly incited and unleashed murder, mayhem and terror worldwide with its endless repetition of a false and defamatory news report that was also broadcast repeatedly by virtually every news outlet in the world after France 2 made the initial decision to legitimize it. And finally, he can acknowledge the defamatory and anti-Semitic content of the fraud.

In her meeting at the Elysee, Lynda Asmani was told that the Palace had received many letters and faxes supporting me and that everyone in the government was aware of the case and of the support that I was getting. She was told that despite this support, I did not have the support of American Jewish organizations and that the American Jewish community was, in fact, against me. She was further told that a major American Jewish organization was actually advising Sarkozy to "keep his hands off the stinking case." Lynda demanded to know, specifically, who was working against me. The answer came as a shock. It was the American Jewish Committee.

But, what’s done is done. Let’s talk about now. French Jews believe it is important that AJ Committee reverse its position on the case. They want a letter or declaration of support, signed by David Harris and leaders of other major American Jewish organizations, delivered to the Elysee Palace without further delay. A copy should be addressed to Sarkozy as well as Jean David Levitte. Sarkozy needs to know that Harris is convinced that the al Dura report is a hoax and that he demands that the truth finally be revealed by the government.

Since Richard Prasquier believes that David Harris wants “the truth revealed as we all do”, I must place my trust in David Harris as well—my trust that he will work tirelessly to bring our hopes of revealing the truth about the al Dura hoax to fruition.

If he does so, he will not find himself alone. There are other organizations on which the AJCommittee can rely. First and foremost, the Zionist Organization of America stands out as a fearless and relentless advocate for the truth, not only with regard to al Dura. In addition, much credit is owed to American Freedom Alliance, StandWithUs, the American Jewish Congress, CAMERA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations who did not hesitate to pursue any and all means to dispel the big lie of al Dura.

The fight for the truth in the al Dura case is of historical importance. AJCommittee can offer immediate support to our efforts by publishing a full page advertisement in any well-known French newspaper, highlighting the main elements of the court’s landmark ruling of May 21, 2008. Furthermore, while the three press releases published, in English, by AJCommittee since September 19, 2008, are appreciated, it would be of even greater value if AJCommittee published a congratulatory press release in France, in French, for a French audience.

This is a battle we must win. And we will win--with or without AJCommittee. Nevertheless, there is still time for AJCommittee to do an about-face and be counted among the growing chorus that is clamoring for the truth.

Nidra Poller reports from the Paris courtroom on the Dreyfus-like affair:

Presiding judge Laurent Trébucq of the 11e Chambre d'Appel announced the verdict in the al Dura case at 1:50 PM today. It only took her two minutes to say in her sweetest voice: Philippe Karsenty is acquitted, the plaintiffs--France 2 and Charles Enderlin--are dismissed. The French word for "dismissed" is "déboutés"...to our ears it sounds like they got a kick where it does the most good.
French mainstream media were not there to hear the news.They left it all for a small band of courageous journalists, such as Véronique Chemla, who has been covering the trials with notable distinction (in French) for Guysen Israel News, a film crew from ARD German TV, reporters from Yedioth Aharanot, Haaretz , and Honest Reporting / Take a Pen, Elisabeth Levy (www.causeur.fr), and of course me.

Philippe Karsenty was nearly in tears as he made his first recorded statement (for ARD)....a message of reconciliation that should be spread as widely as the message of hate carried by the al Dura blood libel. He said he had fought not only to defend his own honor, but to defend Israel, the Jews, and the free world. He hopes that his acquittal will be heard as a warning to those who have been spreading evil falsehoods that enflame Muslims and lead them to senseless violence.

The full explanation of the verdict will be available tomorrow. In the meantime the spin has started, as media that have been defending Enderlin rush to claim that Karsenty's acquittal does not mean the al Dura news report was staged. Hmmm? When Karsenty was convicted of libel last year, they all hollered whoopy, the court has ruled that the al Dura news report was authentic.

Let them spin. If you spin enough, you twist yourself to exhaustion.

Let them spin. I saw Maître Amblard, the France 2 lawyer, disappear into thin air when the verdict was pronounced.

Let them spin. Charles Enderlin already posted on his France 2 blog. He lost but he is crowing. The "headline" claims Karsenty is guilty of defamation but acquitted on good faith. So he already saw the judgment, which has not been made public? I thought it was against the law to disclose such information, but then Enderlin is a law unto himself. So what does it mean if the court does in fact say that Karsenty defamed Enderlin? To claim that a journalist produced a fraudulent news report and continues to defend it to this day is in fact defaming his honor. But if the defamation is true, his honor is truly defamed.
Nidra Poller

The summabitch lost. Enderlin how as good as puled the trigger that set off the war on the Jews (the second intifada) was exposed. In court.JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED. Amen, brothers and sisters.

I
have watched as a group of bloggers- friends and allies of democracy-
have been besieged by unprincipled, self aggrandizing, professional
litigants who, using the Human Rights Commission, which was meant to be
an instrument of help and shelter for the vulnerable has been turned
around and made into a weapon to harass honest people into silence and
to prosecute those who disagree with Progressive group-think. It is as
if they woke up one morning to find the invisible worm nestled into
their ears, toward their brains, telling them what not to think- what
not to say, forcing them to fight an ominous but valiant struggle
against the erosion of free speech in Canada. I have seen Israel
behaving as though she is powerless to defend herself from the blackest
kind of blood libel. So bound to her bed and gagged is she by lawyers
in the armed forces and doctrinaire judges telling her what is
unthinkable, un-sayable and un-doable that her barbaric enemies make
free with her honor and reputation until she cannot hold her head up in
public.

The name of the insanity is Demopathy.
Demopathy is any action or intentional inaction which uses the
language, logic and/or law of democratic society to misappropriate,
weaken, undermine, subvert, or overthrow democratic society.When
Jihadists and their enablers file Human Rights complaints or throw the
cover of politically correct non-speech over their intention to
institute a world-wide Shari’a Caliphate this is the quintessence of
Demopathy. When the western mainstream media helps that same enemy to
concoct frauds that impugn and parayze Israel and America it is nothing
less than Demopathic treason.

Yet another sleeper has awakened
with horror this morning. In a French courtroom, a panel of judges has
thrown back the sheets and begun the process of extirpating a nest of
worms that has bred for far too long in the dark confines of their
government owned media agency France 2. The most visible and egregious
of these worms is Charles Enderlin who, this morning, lost on appeal
his quest to keep the covers closed on one of the most damaging and
bloody libels in the history of journalism.For four years, as his
culpability in aiding the Pallywood propaganda machine in foisting the
al Durah fraud on the world has slowly revealed itself, Enderlin has
pursued a law suit, the sole purpose of which, has been to keep his
incompetence and guilt out of the public eye.

He has fooled
nobody. The disgrace of Charles Enderlin has begun but we cannot stop
there. This is a seminal opportunity to shine light on the complicity
of all of the world’s media, not just in propagating the al Durah blood
libel but in perpetuating a Demopathic cycle of damaging propaganda
being produced by Islamist operatives and mainlined into Western
Culture by thousands of journalists who, like Enderlin, have
compromised their professional codes of ethics and become conduits of
demopathic poison.More on Augean Stables

Finally, the missing footage from the Pali Arab manufactured lie, Al Dura. Disseminated by the French media whores for the jihad. Al Dura, the lie that started the second intifida. Watching these tapes, one can only feel intensely sorry for the Israel. Look what they have to deal with. Think about it.

Just released by France’s Media Ratings the missing France 2 footage from the story
setup that lead to Palestinians shooting a child to prop up a story. France 2 has witheld this
footage since late 2000 when the veracity of the claims that Israelis shot at
the al-Duras were found suspicious. For more background, read Nidra Poller’s article on FrontpageMag on the Charles Enderlin
affair.

Charles Enderlin has a lot to answer for. Primarily crimes against humanity. His hand and his complicity in al dura affair requires a prison sentence. Unable or unwilling to own up to his responsiblity in seting off the second intifada, he has altered the evidence despite a judicial ruling to hand over the tapes. Caroline Glick said, Enderlin's alleged
hoax went beyond journalistic malfeasance. He put blind faith in the
reports of a cameraman who was clearly lying to him. And when faced
with the facts of the deception, he aggressively dismissed them over
the course of seven years. While it is hard to say how events might
have unfolded if he hadn't chosen to act as he did, looking forward the
murderous consequences of the al-Dura myth speak volumes about the
moral imperative for journalists to get their facts straight and to
acknowledge mistakes when they are discovered. So too, it underlines
the need for policymakers to base their decisions on facts, even when
they expose difficult and inconvenient realities."

Joel Pollak (no relation) reports
on his blog that Charles
Enderlin, the France 2 television reporter implicated in the Mohammed
al-Dura fabrication, admitted at a talk at Harvard last night that the famous
scenes of Yasser Arafat donating blood after the 9/11 attacks were, like the
footage of the IDF killing al-Dura, staged:

Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the
embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after
the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The blood donation story made headlines around the world. It was reported by
esteemed news agencies like the BBC, and photographs of Arafat lying with an
outstretched arm ran on many front pages. But the whole scene was staged,
Enderlin said. Arafat didn’t like needles, and so the doctor put a needle near
his arm and agitated a bag of blood. The reporters took the requisite
photographs.

Arafat, it’s worth noting, died in 2005 of AIDS, and it is thus a good thing
that he didn’t actually donate blood. Is it possible that the reputation of the
international press corps in Israel, especially its European members, could get
any worse?

The screening of the al Durah Rushes
should take place in a Paris courtroom today. This will mark a real
turning point in the fight for a more honest media. Richard Landes at Second Draft will be one of the invited viewers in the
court. Richard and Yaacov over at Belly of the Beast will post analysis of the events as
time allows. They both have extensive pre-screening posts up now...

The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin
himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film
was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and
Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin
thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very
much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the
courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.

Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why
he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have
received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these
events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people
who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut
out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in
which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and
carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said
Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France. What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although
this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis
for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration
by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise.
One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence
of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths
were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of
anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or
injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a
young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat
red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But
since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn
for the camera, this seemed an eminently implausible way for someone who had
just been hit by gunfire to behave.

There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add
up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the
following stood out:

* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up
and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the
demonstration

* Although the France 2
cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Shapira, that he had filmed six
minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the
footage of them lasted for less than one minute There was a camera tripod next to
them

* There was no evidence of the boy
actually being hit

* At one point, people in the crowd dried
out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto
his father with his mouth wide open

* After he was said to be dead, he moved
his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the
web for years).

Appeal
Court

is not due to give its verdict in this case
until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and
questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that
France 2 has painted itself into a
corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.

But this scandal goes far beyond

France 2. Soon after it transmitted
the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully
sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident –
including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of
course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of
these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no
‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would
have been avoided.

It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of
heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the
evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here,
indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has
been totally ignored by the mainstream French media. It is also deeply troubling
that the Israel government
ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its
press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now
certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most
ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern blood libel.

The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western
media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent
from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel
which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually
refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the
media, not just for the Middle East conflict
but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more
tenuous by the day.

I must admit, many people told me that Enderlin would doctor the tapes, and I
didn’t believe them. “No,” I thought, “it’s one thing to lie to me and others in
his office, but to the court, where he would surely get caught? He would not be
that reckless…” Not.

Today Charles Enderlin presented in court the “rushes” of Talal abu Rahmah
which the Judge had requested from him. And he presented an edited version in
which he took out at least three minutes, and several scenes that I distinctly
remember seeing. In the United States that’s called tampering with evidence,
obstruction of justice, and perjury. In France, we’ll find out what it’s called.

Most of the material was inconclusive or boring, and I patiently waited for
the material I’d seen. Then, at about 15 minutes on the time code, Enderlin
announces that there will be a break and we will see the final scenes. That’s
when I knew he had cut the scenes. Sure enough, the screen went blank, and then
began the final three
minutes.

Now there are at least two scenes that I remember specifically, one of which
we have documented by Reuters. One scene that wasn’t there I
described as follows:

At another point, a boy faked a leg injury, but instead of drawing big kids
who could pick him up and rush him past the cameramen to an ambulance, he only
attracted little kids. He shooed them away, looked around, and, seeing that no
one was coming to evacuate him, straightened up and walked away without a limp.

Indeed this scene provoked a snort from the Israeli cameraman working for
France2 who was watching the film with me and Enderlin at the time.

When I asked him why, he said, “because it looks so fake.”“That’s my
impression as well,” I responded.Enderlin commented, “Oh, they do that all
the time. It’s their cultural style. They exaggerate.”“But if they do it all
the time, why couldn’t they have staged Al Durah?” I asked.“Oh, they’re not
good enough.”

Now ultimately, this is my word (and possibly, if they remember and have the
courage to come forward, those of Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte), against
Enderlin.

But the second piece I remember is actually documented by Reuters (video sequence). In a
scene we’ve dubbed Molotov Cocktail Kid, a youth lopes comfortably down the
road, showing no sign of injury. He hands of a Molotov Cocktail to another kid
and enters a crowd. We see red on his forehead, but no indication that he’s
injured.

Handing
off the bottle. Note the red on his forehead.

Once in the crowd, he is picked up by others.

Note
that his left leg is bent as the crowd sets to carry him.

Past photographers, among whom we find Talal abu Rahmah, with his France2
equipment.

Talal
is in close, for maximum effect. Note the fellow on the far left who’s in for
the ride. He’s seen smiling in the video.

And then run back right in front of the Israeli position (where he was
presumably shot) and loaded on the ambulance right in front of the Israelis.

Israeli
position in the background. No one is afraid of being hit by them.

When I went to see the rushes at France2, I was specifically looking for this
scene, and remember seeing it. It was jumpy and out of focus, and looked
considerably more realistic (cinéma vérité) than the Reuters footage
which, shot at a distance, is obviously staged.

What if you exposed a great lie, a lie so big that it set off a war - and you held a press conference to expose that lie and no one came? The worst blood libel of this young century.

Welcome to the 21st century.

The incitement for the violent second intifada and The justification of the cold blooded beheading of Daniel Pearl, the explosive allegations and detailed evidence blows the Pali ruse right out of the water.

The left wing jihad loving media covered the lie, perpetrated the
charade - incited the jihad but scurry like rats when called to account.

And so today, Phillip Karsenty ,the journalist sued by France 2 for revealing their complicity, held a press conference and practically no one show. Yann Battefort , PR for the French Embassy showed (but of course, France 2 is owned by the state.) Damage control - or at least a mole to check out the outing of state manipulated news.

Photo: Karsenty and Battefort

I arrived, with much difficulty. Security in the area was excruciating. The Columbus Day parade was marching down Fifth Avenue and law
enforcement was not allowing anyone onto 5th unless you had paperwork,
press creds, or a really good story (yeah, my category.) But hey - no worries, right?

We waited for some media to show. CBS and FOX 5 sent video guys but no journalists. Clearly, this is not a story the media wants to cover - their complicity to incite war - but in that, there is a story.

A pretty French journalist was there from a French online site (not sure if it was Le Monde) and me.

Despite all this, Karsenty's remarks are wildly compelling. Watch the video. And yes that's me asking all the questions, covering the real news the media chooses to deliberately hide. Power without accountability.

Glorious evening spent with the fearless champion of truth and accuracy, Philippe Karsenty. He unveiled the staged blood libel, Al Dura, against the Jews and would not give up until those responsible gave themselves up. But they didn't, of course. The jihad loving media went the opposite way, even going so far as to sue Philippe. The Drefyus Affair redux. He became the object of scorn and derision, professionally and personally.

He has been vindicated. He brought the French media to its knees and set off a series of events that strips the media of its unearned respect, its objectivity. In this Karsenty is an historical figure. He changed the dynamic of assumed media credibility. No longer will the good folks think that what they are seeing or reading is actually accurate. The more that's revealed, the more revolted and shocked the folks will be upon seeing the rotting under belly of the jihad loving media machine.

It is increasingly clear, that this diabolical staging was contrived, deliberate - an incitement to war by French media. I expect such evil from the Palis, but such complicity by the media is unfathomable.

I am working on a presentation with him to run on Atlas. The evidence is staggering.

But before I get to my series of interviews with Philippe take a moment to listen his remarks to the Heritage Foundation here.

Phillipe Karsenty, the French ‘hero’ of the current France2 TV libel trial
involving the al Dura video ‘rushes’ called ’staged’ by the Israel Government
Press Office last week and ordered by the French court to be shown in November
is currently in America. He has been interviewed on nationally syndicated talk
radio programs by Laura Ingraham and Dennis Prager.

He will holding a press conference on Monday in Manhattan. organized in
part by Rabbi Avi Weiss’s Amcha-The Coalition for Jewish Concerns. We
trust that before he leaves for France that national cable news and commentary
TV programs like Hannity & Colmes, O’Reilly Factor and CNN’s Glen Beck might
have him in front of a national audience together with clips of the Reuters
stringer still pictures and corroborating Israeli reports.

“It's
Official: Al Dura Staged” Sharansky's oped in Wall Street Journal is a must read. Israel should have gotten involved long ago. They can not abdicate their responsibility for accountability and truth when the world is working feverishly to delegitimize and ultimately destroy them. The media is aligned with terror force. The rhetorical question remains as to how many news agencies will make this front page news and apologise for jumping upon the anti-semitic bandwagon? (/sarc tag off)

Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose
forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth
and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty,
a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation
after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists
responsible for the Sept. 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a
12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF).

It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the
excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind
a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under
relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy
apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of
Israeli savagery.

The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the second
intifada. The boy Mohammed was the iconic martyr, his name and face
gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was
invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against America, and in the
ghastly video of the beheading of American Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl.

Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of
inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. The
official IDF investigation concluded that, based on the position of IDF forces
vis-à-vis the Duras, it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that an
Israeli bullet hit the boy. Research by the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic
and Commentary magazine concurred. Then a German documentary revealed
inconsistencies and probable manipulations in the account of France 2's lone
journalist on the scene that day, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh.

And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes
of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists
view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes
of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2's Jerusalem
Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

The defamation trial passed almost unnoticed in Israel, to the
apparent detriment of Mr. Karsenty's case. In his ruling in favor of France 2,
judge Joël Boyer five times cited the absence of any official Israeli support
for Mr. Karsenty's claims as indication of their speciousness.

Shame on the Israelis.

Israel's decision to stay on the sidelines was unfortunate
because the truth always matters. The al-Dura incident wasn't the only media
report to inflame passions against Israel in recent years, but it was the one
with the highest profile. Moreover, if, as Mr. Karsenty and others have claimed
persuasively, the al-Dura incident is part of the insidious trend in which
Western media outlets allow themselves to be manipulated by dishonest and
politically motivated sources (recall the Jenin "massacre" that never was, or
the doctored Reuters photos from Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006), then
France 2 must be held accountable.

It is important to note that the al-Dura news report profoundly
influenced Western public opinion. When I served in the Israeli government as
minister of Diaspora Affairs from 2003 to 2005, I traveled frequently to North
American college campuses. I heard first hand how Mohammed al-Dura had shaped
the perceptions of young people just beginning to follow events in the Middle
East. For many Jewish students, the incident was a stain of dishonor that called
into question their support for Israel. For anti-Israel students, the story
reaffirmed their sense of Zionism's innately "racist" nature and became a tool
for recruiting campus peers to the cause.

To its credit, Israel has come to recognize that it must play an
active role in uncovering the truth. The IDF recently sent a letter to France 2
demanding the release of Talal Abu Rahmeh's 27 minutes of raw footage, asserting
the implausibility of IDF guilt for the death of Mohammad al-Dura, and raising
the possibility that the entire affair may have been staged.

Tragically, there is no way to repair the damage inflicted on
Israel's international image by the France 2 report, much less restore the
Israeli and Jewish victims whose lives were exacted as vengeance. It is
possible, however, to deter slanderous news reporting -- and the violence that
often accompanies it -- by setting a precedent for media accountability via the
handover of Talal Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. Encouragingly,
the judge presiding over Mr. Karsenty's appeal has now requested the tapes.
France 2 must make a full public disclosure. If there is nothing to hide, why
should it refuse?

VINDICATED! Karsenty, Landes all the truth tellers vindicated. Philippe Karsenty was tried and found guilty in France eerily echoing the Dreyfus affair -- found guilty by a Jew hating kangaroo French court. Guilty for revealing, exposing the truth - the staging
of Al Dura. So much innocent blood on the hands of the French, a
culpable, Jew hating world press and Islamazis (well, no surprise
there, they live and die for it) and of course the handmaidens of Islamic jihad, The New York Crimes Times.

Philippe Karsenty called me today and will be in town this week. Perhaps I will coax him into a video interview. His story is one for the books.

I met Philippe Karsenty at AIPAC 2005 when he approached me, implored me, a total newbie blogger (at the time Atlas was not even one month old), to view his incriminating presentation of the facts of Al Dura. Here's what I wrote back in March 2005 (check out the pic below from 3/2005 - he is showing me the Al Dura sequence on his laptop);

Next up as I was departing for a breather, Philippe Karsenty grabbed my
ear. Karsenty is the President of Premeier Agence de Notation des Medias
(Media-Ratings_. A French Jew --Hooha!. Mr. Karsenty was responsible
for exposing the hoax of the Al Dura.
The
depth and breadth of the scandal of Al Dura is frightening. He gave
me all the paperwork and then ran upstairs to get the DVD to actually
show me how the whole shooting of the the Pali father and the son by the
Israeli soldiers were staged and manufactured. It was sickening. Maybe
someone will be able to instruct me as to how throw this DVD online
once I get back to New York. YOU MUST SEE THIS TO UNDERSTAND HOW FAR
THE ENEMY WILL GO TO ADVANCE THEIR JEW HATING AGENDA. It is beyond. Mr Karsenty's story needs to be told...............on the front pages of world newspapers.

Driven by the pursuit of the truth Richard Landes, the man behind Pallywood, saw the tapes, worked tirelessly along with Karentsy to expose the Jew hate behind the Pali lie and their pimps, France 2.

You remember Pallywood? If you haven't seen it - go now and click on Pallywood in the post. Al Dura and its enduring icon of hatred.

IsraelNN.com) Seven years after Arab 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura was allegedly
killed in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office has released a statement saying that
a video supposedly showing al-Dura’s death was staged. The announcement, the
first of its kind from a government agency, confirmed what many activists and
media watchdogs have been saying for years.

“The creation of the Mohammed al-Dura myth did great damage to the state of
Israel,” said Government Press Office head Daniel Siman. “It was a blood libel
against the state... it caused damage and dozens of deaths.” The government
decided the video was staged based on several factors, he said, including the
fact that soldiers could not possibly have shot al-Dura from the angle at which
they were standing, and the fact that crucial parts of the scene are missing
from the video footage provided to major media outlets.

Stamp image: Tunisian stamp, which says in French and Arabic "The Palestinian Martyr Child, Mahamed Doura."

A French judge ordered the release of video footage that could reopen the
controversy surrounding the 2000 shooting of Mohammed al-Dura.

The appeals court judge in Paris ordered France 2 TV to show the court about
25 minutes of raw video footage shot on Sept. 30, 2000 at the Netzarim Junction
in the Gaza Strip, when the 12-year-old Palestinian boy apparently was shot and
killed in an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian
militants.

Al-Dura’s shooting death became an instant icon for Palestinian suffering at
the hands of Israeli brutality, but the Israeli army, after initially
apologizing for the death, concluded after an investigation that the boy could
not possibly have been hit by Israeli bullets.

When Philippe Karsenty, director of the media watchdog group Media-Ratings,
called France 2’s exclusive video of the incident “a hoax,” he was found guilty
of slander. He appealed the decision, and on Wednesday the appeals judge ordered
that the video be released. Karsenty called the court’s decision a victory.
“This is only the first step in a victory,” his lawyer, Marc Levy, corrected
him.France 2, whose cameraman in Gaza, Talal Abu Rahma, shot the exclusive
footage that was considered a major scoop at the time, was given until Nov. 14
to hand over the video to the court.Several French and U.S. journalists who
have seen the raw footage have indicated the shooting might have been staged by
Palestinians.

Al Dura - the catalyst for the second intifada. Al Dura - the blood libel Pali marketing tool used for incitement to murder. Al Dura - resulting in countless deaths of Jews. Innocent civilians. Phillip Karsenty was tried and found guilty in France eerily echoing the Dreyfus affair -- found guilty by a Jew hating kangaroo French court. Guilty for revealing, exposing the truth - the staging of Al Dura. So much innocent blood on the hands of the French, a culpable, Jew hating world press and Islamazis (well, no surprise there, they live and die for it) and of course the handmaidens of Islamic jihad, The New York Crimes Times.

Next up as I was departing for a breather, Philippe Karsenty grabbed my
ear. Karsenty is the President of Premeier Agence de Notation des Medias
(Media-Ratings_. A French Jew --Hooha!. Mr. Karsenty was responsible
for exposing the hoax of the Al Dura.
The
depth and breadth of the scandal of Al Dura is frightening. He gave
me all the paperwork and then ran upstairs to get the DVD to actually
show me how the whole shooting of the the Pali father and the son by the
Israeli soldiers were staged and manufactured. It was sickening. Maybe
someone will be able to instruct me as to how throw this DVD online
once I get back to New York. YOU MUST SEE THIS TO UNDERSTAND HOW FAR
THE ENEMY WILL GO TO ADVANCE THEIR JEW HATING AGENDA. It is beyond. Mr Karsenty's story needs to be told...............on the front pages of world newspapers.

Image: Tunisian stamp, which says in French and Arabic "The Palestinian Martyr Child, Mahamed Doura."

You remember Pallywood? If you haven't seen it - go now and click on Pallywood in the post. Al Dura and its enduring icon of hatred.

Apparently and finally the IDF is calling for the truth. All I can say is, what took so long?

The IDF has abandoned its official silence in a seven-year-old
case that has been characterized as a "blood libel" against the IDF and the
State of Israel.

On September 10, the deputy commander of the IDF's Spokesman's
Office, Col. Shlomi Am-Shalom, submitted a letter to the France 2 television
network's permanent correspondent in Israel, Charles Enderlin, regarding
Enderlin's story from September 30, 2000, in which he televised 55 seconds of
edited footage from the Netzarim junction in the central Gaza Strip purporting
to show IDF forces shooting and killing 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura.

After its exclusive broadcast that day, France 2 offered the
edited film free of charge to all media outlets. The footage, and the story of
the purported IDF killing of al-Dura, was quickly rebroadcast around the world.

Within days, al-Dura became a symbol of the Palestinian war against Israel.
His name has been repeatedly invoked by terrorists and their supporters as a
justification for killing Israelis, Jews and their Western supporters.

In his letter, Am-Shalom asked for the entire unedited 27-minute film that
was shot by France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu-Rahma that day, as well
as the footage filmed by Abu-Rahma on October 1, 2000. Am-Shalom requested that
the broadcast-quality films be sent to his office no later than September 15.
France 2 has yet to hand over the requested film.

The IDF's move came against the backdrop of French media watchdog Philippe
Karsenty's legal battle with France 2 regarding the network's coverage of the
al-Dura affair.

Last year, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty, who runs the Internet media
watchdog Web site Media Ratings, for defamation for a letter he sent out in 2004
accusing France 2 of staging the al-Dura story.

What is known about the rest of the day is fragmentary and additionally confusing. A report from a nearby hospital says that a dead boy was admitted on September 30, with two gun wounds to the left side of his torso. But according to the photocopy I saw, the report also says that the boy was admitted at 1:00 P.M.; the tape shows that Mohammed was shot later in the afternoon. The doctor's report also notes, without further explanation, that the dead boy had a cut down his belly about eight inches long. A boy's body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag but with his face exposed, was later carried through the streets to a burial site (the exact timing is in dispute). The face looks very much like Mohammed's in the video footage. Thousands of mourners lined the route. A BBC TV report on the funeral began, "A Palestinian boy has been martyred." Many of the major U.S. news organizations reported that the funeral was held on the evening of September 30, a few hours after the shooting. Oddly, on film the procession appears to take place in full sunlight, with shadows indicative of midday.

Fallows seizes on a number of time discrepancies. Given that only 55 seconds was made available, it's clear (especially with the above observations) that the exact narrative can't be known until the complete footage is viewed.

Caroline Glick, one of the finest analytical minds our time, dissects the Al Dura affair and exposes the French jihad loving media dogs for what they are - and the quiet acquiescence of the Israeli government. The silence of the lambs.

Last Thursday a French court found Philippe Karsenty guilty of
libeling France 2 television network and its Jerusalem bureau chief Charles
Enderlin. Karsenty, who runs a media watchdog Web site called Media Matters,
called for Enderlin and his boss Arlette Chabot to be sacked for their September
30, 2000 televised report alleging that IDF forces had killed 12-year-old
Muhammad al-Dura at Netzarim junction in Gaza that day.

Their lawsuit against Karsenty was the first of three lawsuits
that Enderlin and France 2 filed against French Jews who accused them in various
ways of manufacturing a blood libel against Israel by purposely distorting the
events at Netzarim junction that day. The second trial, against Pierre Lurcat,
is set to begin this week. Lurcat organized a mass demonstration against France
2 on October 2, 2002 after the broadcast of a German television documentary film
by Esther Schapira called Three Bullets and a Dead Child: Who Shot Muhammad
al-Dura? Schapira's film concludes that IDF bullets could not have killed
Dura.

September 30, 2000 was the third day of the Palestinian jihad.
That day an IDF position at Netzarim junction was attacked by Palestinian
Authority security forces. A prolonged exchange of fire ensued. That afternoon,
France 2's Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma submitted footage of a man and
a boy at the junction cowering behind a barrel. The two were later identified as
Jamal al-Dura and his 12-year-old son Muhammad. Enderlin, who had not been
present at the scene, took Rahma's 27 minutes of raw footage and narrated a
50-second film in which he accused the IDF of having shot and killed the boy.
Enderlin's film itself does not show the boy dying. There are no blood stains
where the boy and his father were crouched. No ambulance came to evacuate them.
No autopsy was performed on Muhammad's body.

FRANCE 2 distributed its film free of charge to anyone who
wanted it - although not the full 27 minutes that Rahma filmed. The film was
shown repeatedly worldwide and particularly on Arab television networks. The
results of the footage were murderous. On October 12, two IDF reservists, Yosef
Avrahami and Vadim Novesche, were lynched by a mob at a PA police station in
Ramallah. The mob invoked Dura's death as a justification for its barbarism. The
Orr Commission which investigated the violent rioting by Israeli Arabs in
October 2000 stated in its final report that "Muhammad al-Dura's picture, which
was distributed by the media, was one of the causes that led people in the Arab
sector to take to the streets on October 1, 2000."

Countless suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists have
cited Dura as a justification of their crimes. For the past six years PA
television has continuously aired a film showing Dura in heaven beckoning other
Palestinian children to "martyr" themselves by becoming terrorists and join him
there.

The Palestinians are not the only ones who have used Dura as a
terrorist recruitment tool. He is prominently featured in al-Qaida recruitment
videos and on Hizbullah banners. Daniel Pearl's murderers interspersed their
video of his beheading with the France 2 film. Throughout Europe, and
particularly in France, Muslims have used Dura as a rallying cry in their
attacks against Jews - attacks which broke out shortly after the Dura film was
broadcast.

AT FIRST, Israel accepted responsibility for Dura's death
without conducting an investigation. Yet, in the weeks that followed the event,
engineers Nahum Shachaf and Yosef Doriel conducted investigations on behalf of
the IDF's Southern Command.

Both men separately proved mathematically and physically that
the IDF forces on the ground could not see the Duras from their position and
that it was physically impossible for their bullets to have killed Muhammad.
Then OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen.Yom Tov Samia held a news conference in late
November based on their findings at which he said that the probability that the
IDF had killed Dura was low.

Yet Samia was the only senior Israeli official to question the
veracity of the film. Then chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz disavowed Samia's
investigation. Prime minister Ehud Barak never questioned the veracity of
Enderlin's murderous accusation against the IDF.

In the intervening years, private researchers and media
organizations have taken it upon themselves to investigate what happened that
day. Their findings have shown that at a minimum, the probability that the IDF
killed Dura is minuscule and more likely, the event was either staged or edited
to engender the conclusion that Dura had been killed by Israel. The few people
who have been allowed to watch Rahma's entire film have stated that it is
impossible to conclude that Muhammad was killed because he raises his head and
props himself up on his elbow after he was supposedly shot.

Respected media organizations like The Wall Street
Journal, CBS News, Atlantic Monthly and Commentary magazine
have published detailed investigations that all conclude that the footage was
either staged or simply edited to show something that didn't happen.

Yet, even as private individuals were dedicating their time and
passion to proving that France 2 had purposely broadcast a blood libel against
Israel that caused the death and injury of Israelis and Jews throughout the
world and marred the honor of the IDF, official Israel remained silent.

The decision on the first trial is this Thursday (19), second trial, next Thursday (26).Richard will be in Paris from 22-27 October. I'll interview him when he gets back to the States. More here. Never forget that the al dura set off the second intifada ..........Read Nidra's piece as well here.

How French TV
Fudged the Death of Mohammed Al-Durah - Richard LandesOn September
30, 2000, images of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durah and his father - cowering
behind a barrel at Netzarim Junction in Gaza - circulated globally, along with a
claim that they had been the targeted victims of Israeli fire. Indignant
observers dismissed any Israeli attempt to deny responsibility. Palestinians and
anti-Zionists, insisting that Israel killed the boy on purpose, used al-Durah as
the first blood libel of the twenty-first century. Within a week, crowds the
world over shouted: "We want Jewish blood!" and "Death to the Jews!" Raw
footage from that day reveals pervasive staging; no evidence of Israeli fire
directed at the barrel, much less of Israelis targeting the pair; given the
angles, the Israelis could scarcely have hit the pair at all; there was no sign
of blood on the ground where the father and son reportedly bled for 20 minutes;
and none of the dozen cameraman present filmed anything that could substantiate
the claim that the father and son had been hit, much less that the Israelis had
targeted them. The raw footage features a long succession of obviously faked
injuries. One fellow grabbed his leg in agony, then, upon seeing that no one
would come to carry him away, walked away without a limp. It was stunning. That
was no cameraman's conspiracy: It was everyone - a public secret about which
news consumers had no clue. Two documentaries - one German, one French -
sparked a demonstration in Paris outside the France2 offices by citizens
outraged to discover that so horrendous an image may well have been a fake. Now,
four years later, the lawsuits over the event are finally coming to trial in
Paris. The writer is a medieval history professor at Boston University.
(New Republic) See also The Birth of an Icon - Al-Durah:
What Happened (Second Draft)

The French don't change. Spineless, Jew hating demagogues. Exposing the staging of Al Durah will have its day in court. The staged media event that kicked off the second intifada. So much blood on French hands.

France2, Charles Enderlin and Arlette Chabot (head of France2) are suing private individuals like me (not journalists) who used their websites to criticize France2.

This trial will be the moment of truth in the blood libel against Israel. It will expose French media for the jihad tool that it is.

I met Phillipe, one of the journalists being sued, a couple of years ago in DC. He was earnest and relentless in his pursuit of the truth. He showed me frame by frame the impossibility of the French claim of Israeli culpability in the death of the boy and/or the father.

For a discussion of some of the evidence surrounding the most curious thing
about footage depicting a child killed by a bullet to the stomach who bled for
twenty minutes in front of the cameraman — the absence of blood — see Blood?
We’ve Got Some.

The indispensible analysis of Nidra Poller, EXCLUSIVE TO ATLAS READERS. Poller shares my sentiments on the "innocent civilian canard" among a great many ther things. Read it.

DON’T APOLOGIZE Nidra Poller Paris 8 August 2006 Don’t apologize. Don’t express sincere regrets. Don’t promise to investigate. Don’t fall into that trap. Apologize in private, in the privacy of the heart, apologize in prayer, ask for divine forgiveness, but don’t apologize to public opinion. Don’t fall into the traps set by vicious jihadis and relayed by unscrupulous media. Investigate, hold to the highest standards, but don’t promise to investigate. Don’t make promises to the cynical birds of ill augur perched on the fringes of the battle, squawking accusations against your brave hearts. Don’t say “we will investigate” because they translate it to “guilty as charged.” Did they ever ask a jihadi to investigate? Did they ever scrutinize a jihadi investigation with their steely eyes? Do they investigate their own misfiring, misjudgments, misleading misinformation?

Don’t apologize to a world that does not share our values. Don’t play into the perverse blood libel game. Your noble words fall into their meat grinder and it’s our own blood and macerated flesh that comes out the other end. Don’t apologize for misdemeanors, for slips of the gun in the heat of battle, because the ears that slurp up those innocent explanations are on fire with lust for our original sin. They are not accusing you of collateral damage, they are accusing us of killing the divinity we brought to the world, accusing us of existing, accusing us of existence itself. The jihad gods belch it out through their beards: you love life, we love death. They want death to win. And their misguided handmaidens pounce on every apology and throw it into the maw of the death worshippers.

Don’t apologize for killing civilians.

The hand trembles to write these words. How not to apologize, how not to suffer their pain in one’s own flesh, how not to have nightmares?

Don’t apologize to public opinion for killing civilians. Because dead civilians are the WMDs of this war. Israel is bombarded with rockets and with alleged civilian casualties. Either Lebanese sources are lying, or Hizbullah fighters are invincible, because every Israeli operation yields a new crop of civilian deaths. And the media take notes, like dutiful stenographers, and the statistics are racked up and turn into more weapons aimed at the total destruction of Israel and the Jews.

These jihad battles don’t begin with military action, they begin with civilian deaths in the jihad camp. Mohamed al-Dura for the jihad-intifada, the Gaza Beach episode for the current Hamas-Hizbullah offensive. They begin with blood libel--Israel is massacring our children--and everything that follows is justified by that initial crime. After the opening act, the jihad campaign segues into a small foray, just one more incident among dozens or hundreds in the never-ending war of attrition. If Israel counterattacks, the jihadis throw up their arms in horror and scream “what’s all this fuss about a few captured [sic] soldiers?” At the same time, their bearded chieftains, who have run for cover, send out credible threats of annihilation of Israel and all the Jews on the face of the earth. The rhythm of attacks accelerates--shahid martyrdom operations after September 2000, rocket attacks now—into a raging wave of atrocities aimed at Jewish civilians, accompanied by uninhibited expressions of genocidal intent. The jihadis are quick to declare victory. And redefine triumph. They begin with the stated goal of destroying the “Zionist enemy,” but as soon as they see that they are losing, they start attacking with dead civilians. The Jenin massacre, the Qana massacre, and countless mini-massacres, an endless series of macabre crime scenes, bloodied bodies, Israeli guilt, and it is all relayed without verification by the very media that pick up Israeli regrets and slather them over the “massacre” to make it look even worse.

Subsequently, when a bit of the truth comes out, Israeli apologies are used to contradict it. “What do you mean Mohamed al-Dura is not dead? The IDF apologized!” And Qana? A rare opportunity to dig under the rubble of lies and extract living truths: it was certainly not a heartless intentional massacre, and probably not an unfortunate side effect of war in tightly crowded villages but, most likely, a self-inflicted wound enhanced by gory fabrications.

Yes, rockets are launched from homes in Lebanon, deliberately attracting counterattacks that will kill civilians and Hizbullah fighters dressed as civilians, but it is worse than human shields and more macabre. And this time the evidence is leaking quickly. Lebanon is not Gaza, local stringers are not alone, the international press is in the field, the bloggers are on the job 24/24. The disturbing facts about the Qana bombing were rapidly uncovered and broadcast in reliable media. Will they be dismissed, as France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin continues to this day to dismiss the al-Dura manipulation, by claiming that Palestinians (or Hizbullis) are not clever enough for such complicated staging?

What is the role of French diplomacy in the Lebanese conflict? President Chirac packaged it as a “humanitarian crisis”…only two days after the outbreak of hostilities. MFA Douste-Blazy inadvertently admitted that France has been calling for a cease fire…since the very beginning. Is France a secret ally of Hizbullah? Or simply a well-behaved dhimmi state? A dhimmi does not need to be told how to react to this or that incident, he just has to grasp the underlying concept of jihad conquest: jihadis can attack infidels, infidels do not have the right to strike back. If the conquering jihadis are in a position of supreme power, they decimate the conquered population and erect their version of the monument to the war dead-- a mountain of severed heads. But when the jihadis are fighting an uphill battle, as is the case in Lebanon today, their main line of defense is civilian suffering. The plight of the refugees, the dead and the injured, widows and orphans, the destruction of Lebanon--a coherent strategy designed to engage the international community in a concerted effort to force Israel to stop fighting and submit to Hizbullah’s demands.

Don’t apologize. Don’t apologize to European countries all dolled up with plaques and memorials to the Shoah and now mobilized to facilitate another extermination project. Don’t fall into European traps. Here in Europe local jihadis attack, then fall back and complain that Muslims are being persecuted. Don’t bow your head when Europeans shake their fingers. At the height of the conflict, and smack between two Ahmadinejad Jew-killing declarations, the French foreign minister shamelessly caressed Iran’s rump with one hand and fondled domestic Jew-hating immigrants with the other. Don’t apologize because there is no one on earth to apologize to. You can’t apologize to people who are sitting on the sidelines enjoying life while Israeli civilians suffocate in bunkers and Israeli soldiers courageously face death, fighting Hizbullah that is fighting for Iran that is fighting to destroy us all, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Indians…

Don’t apologize. Stand up to them the way you stand up to katyushas, and fight back against this lethal narrative jihad with equal valor and intelligence. No ordinary PR efforts can counter it. New methods are necessary, far more severe, far less defensive. Your critics do not care what you are fighting for or how nobly you are fighting; they run for cover, side with the villains, hide behind the killers. They have to declare Israel guilty because they are terrified at confronting the real force that is bearing down on them. You can’t reassure them by saying how good you are, how careful not to make tragic mistakes. Apologies feed their anguish, and their anguish is turned against us, against Jews. How dare we be so humane when subject to such vile aggression?

The injustice is beyond belief: the small nation of Israel has to fight against Iran, and as if that’s not enough, gets stabbed in the back while engaged in fierce battle. Don’t explain this, they don’t want to know. Use it to our advantage, use it to transform our place in the world. You are fighting to defend Israel’s existence, to establish authentic sovereignty for Israel and, beyond that, to bring an end for Jews everywhere to vicious cycles of persecution, extermination, and restoration. We are not victims, we are not mercenaries, we are no one’s protectorate. The cost of this war is too high today but the benefits can be multiplied if we rise to the full dignity that goes with such momentous responsibility.

What is Israel doing in Lebanon today? Israel is doing to Lebanon what we would have done to Germany when Hitler came to power…if we had a state then…but we didn’t…and we do now.

I thought of all those young soldiers in the hot sun and dust of Gaza.

But the French media are only thinking of Palestinian hardship. The only difference between present coverage and the worst of the years 2000-3 is that the novelty has worn off. Every Israel-bashing distortion has been trotted out, but the obsession is muted by a lazy summertime-and-the-living-is-easy tone. As I remarked the other day, Gilad Shalit has lost his hyphen, he’s not French-Israeli, he’s a simple, I’d say a lowdown Israeli soldier, no different from his buddies who blew up the Gaza power station, the ones who bop in and out of Ramallah as if it were their mamma’s kitchen, the ones who are the cause of Palestinian bitterness, the ones whose fault it is that Résistants kidnap soldiers and kill colons. OK, maybe there was a thin trickle of sympathy on Monday for those baby-face boys, but it’s gone now. The helmets are covering the kepelech and masking the innocent faces, we’re back to the stereotypes, the big bad Israeli army. And now they’ve capture political figures! What nerve! According to Le Figaro the whole world is against these Israeli methods (no mention of George W. Bush who approves). Maybe Fatah and Hamas can’t get their act together, but the French media are, as usual, unanimous.

The Résistants who captured the colon (in Jerusalem…but of course they knew he was a colon, it was written all over his face) threatened to kill him unless the Israelis stopped their military operation. So when it turns out he was already dead before the operation began, how do the French media explain that one? Easy. They just don’t mention that insignificant detail. In an article on the Summer Rain operation, Gilles Paris of Le Monde managed to serve up the Gaza Beach libel as if it were the hottest mystery after the virgin birth. Did you know? Seven people were killed on a Gaza beach and Israelis and Palestinians still disagree on who dunnit.

The French media are clucking about the stunning Hamas about-face; the democratically elected Palestinian government has implicitly recognized the existence of __________ by signing this really neat document, the best peace plan yet! But those stubborn Israelis chose to invade Gaza instead of waiting for diplomacy to find the missing soldier. Like they found the missing colon?

The best media trick came from France 2, the home of Charles Enderlin of al-Dura fame. Charles could barely contain his joy in reporting on the intransigence of the Israeli Army he so loves to hate. And someone topped it off with the best mistranslation of the decade: Israeli leaflets dropped on Beit Hanun--famous for its Qassam launch sites--advised residents to stay in their homes because the village was going to be bombarded. When your corner NGO announces the massacre, it will be no surprise to French viewers!

The other day my thoughts were with Israeli soldiers toiling in the dust and the heat, copped up in tanks and airplanes, desperately searching for one precious kidnapped soldier, called up once more to defend their country, while here in the Parisian Diaspora we celebrate the 2nd annual festival of Jewish cultures. Israeli boys are in the tanks, and we are sitting in the courtyard of the 3rd arrondissement City Hall. If I remember correctly, last year’s festival covered yiddishkeit. The theme this year is “Sephardic Mosaic.” A beautiful spacious Arab tent at one end of the courtyard invites visitors to stretch out on silken couches or perch on damask poufs placed around large copper-tray tables. Mint tea and Oriental pastries are served. An Oriental dancer performs at the opposite end of the courtyard. The street in front of the city hall is blocked, decorated with palm trees and mountain laurel, and set out with comfortable deck chairs.
It was all so convivial. What is there to not like? Should we cover our festival with black mourning drapes because 18 year-old Eliyahu Asheri z”l was shot in the head? And Corporal Gilad Shalit is in the hands of bloodthirsty jihadis? Isn’t this month-long festival proof of good relations between France and the Jews? Which would you rather for your sons, a tank in Gaza or a pouf in the courtyard?

I’ll never forget Keith Richburg’s Washington Post article on the November uprising. He claimed that if you were sitting in a trendy bistrot in the Marais you wouldn’t know those banlieue populations even existed. I loved Richburg’s Out of America, but when it comes to the oppressed masses of Paris, he can’t see further than the tip of his eyelashes. All the deck chairs in front of the 3rd arrdt. city hall (at the northern tip of the Marais, two steps away from the last trendy bistrot) were occupied by third generation third world kids who couldn’t care less about Jewish cultures, even when they are dressed in Arab trappings. The bigger boys played impudent soccer at one end of the closed street. Later in the day the teens were replaced by Muslim mommas with babies and toddlers.

And I couldn’t help thinking that no amount of dhimmitude would save us even one seat in the brave new world in the making.

PS: today’s press is a chorus of wagging fingers. Once again, Israel has gone too far! One kidnapped soldier can’t justify all this frightful destruction. The democratically elected Hamas government deserves respect, and the people who democratically elected the government should in no way be held responsible for the kidnapping of a soldier and a colon. I guess these journalists still haven’t got the message. Their Swedish colleague was shot point blank in Mogadishu, and they still think they are the good guys of the bad guys, safe from harm up there on their high horses, spitting down on Israeli heads.

Nidra is in Tel Aviv covering the Gaza Beach blood libel. Here is her seminal report, unedited. Only here in the Atlas sphere.

LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEADNidra PollerTel Aviv June 14 2006Eight Palestinian civilians are killed by an explosion on a Gaza beach and Israel is immediately accused, chided, chastised, rebuked …on the basis of a questionable news report from vaguely identified sources. Outrage is intense and close to unanimous. When, in the space of a few short days, the Israeli Defense Ministry produces the results of a serious investigation that clears Israeli troops of responsibility for the deaths, the media tamper with the evidence! In a sham of scrupulous caution, the IDF report is picked apart as if it were necessarily shoddy, while undue credibility is given to a lone expert, Marc Galasco, working for Human Rights Watch. Le Monde reports that the Israeli investigation is incomplete, suggesting it is half-baked, when in fact it will be voluntarily pursued to determine whether the accident was caused by buried Palestinian artillery or an unexploded Israeli shell aimed at rocket-launchers on a previous occasion. CNN-World reported Galasco’s “findings” as if they were Pentagon brand high-tech, only revealing his HRW affiliation hours later. In the face of this perverse pussy-footing, a forthright reply is in order. Israel does not target sunbathing civilians. Israeli civilians are in fact targeted by an incessant rain of rockets fired from the recently evacuated Gaza strip. Israel attacks launching pads, launchers, and vehicles transporting rockets. If jihadis deliberately operate from the midst of civilian populations, what is Israel to do? What would you want your army to do if the rockets were landing on your house?Reliable information was available from varied sources shortly after the initial broadcast of what looks like a Hamas-produced exploitation video passed off as news. A thorough scientific investigation has now been presented, countering allegations of Israeli guilt. To pretend that reasonable doubt subsists is simply dishonest. To claim that the Hamas version should be given equal weight with the IDF investigation is to abandon all notion of rational analysis and, consequently, all sense of reality. To maintain that we should give equal credence to both sides of the story is to engage in life-threatening mental contortions.Every single Western media with a claim to integrity should not only publish a retraction of the unjust accusations thrown at Israel, they should explore their own readiness to pick up and relay these unfounded accusations. And, further, they should admit that the death of the Galia family and the grief of the 11 year-old orphan Huda were cynically exploited. The image of Huda running across the sand, discovering the dead bodies, throwing herself around hysterically, crying, and mouthing totally inappropriate accusations should be reviewed, cleansed of the twisted emotional impact it was designed to provoke, and studied as a stunning example of blood libel. Nothing less than this is acceptable. And it should be understood that Israel is not the only victim of this manipulation. The target is much larger. It includes the entire Western world, our values, and our future.What has happened? Instead of admitting the error and retracting the extravagant accusation, media and public officials have jumped on a June 13th incident in which Palestinian civilians were inadvertently killed in an aerial attack aimed at a truck transporting Katyusha rockets…to be launched against Israeli civilians. And somehow, in this ethical swamp of public opinion, the fact that many of these Katyushas and Qassams fail to kill is chalked up to the credit of the launchers. The Israeli attack is “murderous,” the terrorists are “militants,” and the rockets are “crude and unsophisticated”…about as harmful as spitballs.Now Israeli officials are dancing on seven feet trying to prove that they are not evil monsters but decent people trying to protect their civilian population. They should be standing straight and tall and demanding an apology from public opinion and those who forge it.How can such a bald-faced lie as the Gaza Beach Massacre get away with murder? Reliable information exists. The IDF scrupulously records, films, monitors, times, measures every single operation, every last shot. There is no ambiguity here. Nothing mysterious. No bone to gnaw on. Public opinion does not need to mull over the details, the shrapnel extracted from the bodies of the wounded, the size of the crater, the timing, the exact whereabouts of all six shells fired by an Israeli gunboat earlier that afternoon. The detailed report drafted by responsible officers of an honorable army serving a respectable democratic country should be accepted as given. The media should honestly explore their own guilt. And individuals should ask themselves how they were blinded by images of a child’s grief, and unable to think rationally about the story she was illustrating. Falsified emotions and false accusations have seeped into the public mind, poisoning the heart, and incapacitating the logical facilities. Every journalist with eyes to see now knows that the “news report” included a spliced-in image of an Israeli gunboat, taken earlier that day, to give viewers the impression they were seeing the shell fired in real time, following it as it hits the beach, maims and kills, and creates a grieving orphan. Either these procedures are common practice or they should be denounced. Huda has become an icon in the Arab-Muslim world, bringing to mind Mohamed al-Dura seminal icon of the jihad-intifada launched against Israel in September 2000. There too a crude enactment of a child’s suffering served as the emotional flash that obliterates rational thinking. The failure to come to grips with the al-Dura blood libel, despite the relentless efforts of analysts and investigators, has facilitated acceptance of the Sudaniya Beach version. There is not a shred of evidence that Mohamed al-Dura was killed. [Myth, Fact, and al-Dura Affair, Commentary] Ample display of bleeding bodies and bloody garments corroborate reports that Palestinians were in fact hit by an explosion on a Gaza Beach on June 9th. Nothing indicates that they were, as France 2 Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin said of Jamal and Mohamed al-Dura, “targets of fire coming from the Israeli positions.” But we see today that no amount of scientific proof can suffice to nullify this type of accusation. Unless and until they are recognized for what they are—blood libel. Irrational, exterminationist hatred of Jews. Unacceptable.